


Stitching a Story

by myrtlebroadbelt



Series: Four Seasons [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Books, Family, Gen, Hobbits, Reading, Spring, Storytelling, Young Bilbo Baggins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 11:03:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10463436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrtlebroadbelt/pseuds/myrtlebroadbelt
Summary: In the spring, Mr. and Mrs. Baggins decide it's about time their son learned his letters.





	

In the spring, when the carpets had been beaten and the cloaks put in storage, and the flowers in the garden began peeping through the open windows like nosy neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Baggins decided it was about time their son learned his letters.

In truth, it wasn’t their decision as much as it was Bilbo’s. He was going through a rather inquisitive phase, and his parents could hardly scratch their noses or clear their throats without having to answer as to why noses itched and throats tickled in the first place.

Story time had become an especially arduous experience, with Belladonna having to pause the plot at every other sentence to satisfy her son’s curiosity. One particular story — about a brave hat rack who, when its master’s favorite hat blew away out the front door, set off on a quest to retrieve it — took the span of five nights to finish, as Bilbo questioned everything from where wind came from to exactly how a hat rack was made.

One afternoon, when the sun was warm and the breeze cool, the Bagginses chose to while away the time between luncheon and tea in the garden. Bungo sat on the bench puffing his pipe, with his wife reclined like a housecat beside him, her head resting on his lap. Bilbo, meanwhile, was running to and fro chasing butterflies and poking the soil with sticks.

Bungo wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. He didn’t do it unhappily — after a particularly bitter winter, he welcomed a bit of perspiration. As he moved to put his handkerchief back in his trouser pocket, he discovered a tiny index finger and thumb grasping one corner of the white cotton square.

“What are these, Papa?” Bilbo asked, rubbing the blue _BB_ stitched into the fabric.

“These?” Bungo spoke around the stem of his pipe. “These are _B_ s.”

Bilbo’s brow collapsed into a furrow. “Where are their legs?”

“Hmm?” Bungo asked, his own brow giving in to confusion. Then, upon understanding, he chuckled. “Oh! No, no, my dear boy. Not bees. _B_ s.”

Bilbo’s face became so rumpled it threatened to turn itself inside out. Bungo supposed he should clarify.

“It’s a letter, you see. Like a symbol. It stands for Bungo. And Baggins. _B.B._ That means it’s mine.”

“Hardly,” Belladonna remarked from under his nose, “in a house with _B_ s around every corner.”

“There are bees in the house, Mama?”

“Not bees, sweet pea. _B_ s.” She sat up on the bench and stole a whiff of her husband’s pipe. “Can you guess what other words begin with _B_?”

“ _B_?” Bilbo repeated.

Belladonna finished blowing a smoke ring and nodded enthusiastically. “That’s right!”

“What’s right?”

“ _Bee_ begins with _B_.”

Bilbo looked desperately at his father, who was in the midst of reclaiming his pipe.

“I think we may be confusing him, my dear,” Bungo told his wife, and blew a smoke ring of his own. “Let’s see if we can explain it better, shall we, my boy? Can you guess the first letter of your own name?”

“ _B_?” Bilbo answered, for it was, as of only a moment ago, the only letter he knew.

“Yes, very good,” Bungo praised. “And what’s your mother’s name?”

“Mama.”

“No, her other name. Belladonna. That begins with _B_ as well. Mama begins with an _M_.”

“What is an _M_?” Bilbo wondered, testing the sound. “Do they have wings, too?”

Bungo and Belladonna glanced at each other with quiet smiles. It was clear they had more work to do, but at the moment it was time for tea, so they saved further lessons for another day.

That day was, to be very specific, the following Tuesday. It was a rainy morning after second breakfast, and Bungo was tucked into his armchair reading one of his favorite titles: _The History Of The Shire_. Bilbo, who had sulked since waking about having to stay inside all day, knelt at his father’s feet and peered over the book’s brown leather cover, his small round nose resting atop the spine.

Bungo looked up from the page and met eyes with his son. “Can I help you?”

In answer, Bilbo climbed into his father’s lap, his soft curly head knocking Bungo under the chin in the process. He laughed and swung an arm around the boy, letting him settle against the crook of one shoulder.

“Read to me,” Bilbo requested, nodding to the book.

“The polite thing to say is _please_ ,” his father reminded him. “But I don’t suspect you’ll like this one very much, my lad. Shall we try something else from the shelf?”

Bilbo leaned forward and squinted at the page. Then his eyes lit up, and he pointed. “Papa, Papa! I found a _B_!”

Bungo followed his son’s finger, which had settled firmly on the word _Bywater_. “That’s right, Bilbo. Very good.”

He grinned at Belladonna, who was seated at the parlor table answering letters. She stopped the scratch of her pen and grinned back at him.

“What are these?” Bilbo asked then, sliding his finger across the rest of the word.

And so, with raindrops splashing against the window and the sun weaving in and out of the clouds, father and son spent the next hour learning _Y_ , _W_ , _A_ , _T_ , _E_ , and _R_. Once Bilbo understood that letters did not have legs or wings and were not, in fact, related to insects in any way, he seemed to have a much easier time of it.

That evening, as Bungo prepared dinner, Belladonna opened Bilbo’s toy chest. Beneath his wooden sword and floppy-earred rabbit, she found a sack of plain square blocks. Later, when the rest of the house was asleep, Belladonna sat at the kitchen table with a full pot of tea and painted letters on every side of every block in thick, dark strokes.

And that was only the beginning.

They went on picnics several times a week, pointing to clouds and flowers and wheelbarrows on the way, and saying each word’s first letter out loud. When they picked the perfect spot, in the middle of a flat green field or atop their very hill in the shade of the oak tree, they would do the same with everything they ate and even what they sat on.

“ _Quilt_ ,” Belladonna told her son, patting the pale yellow fabric and inviting him to sit, “begins with _Q_. And _Q_ is never without her very best friend, _U_.”

“And _U_ is never without _Q_?” Bilbo wondered.

“On the contrary,” Belladonna said. “You’ll find _U_ without _Q_ rather often. She’s a very busy lady, helping to form lots of words with lots of different letters.”

“Is _Q_ her favorite?”

“That’s _quite_ a good _question_ ,” she replied, and tapped his nose.

They created games of it. When he knew the alphabet well enough to sing it, Bilbo ran through Bag End and even the marketplace, searching for items along the way to represent each letter, in order, from _A_ to _Z_. “ _Lettuce_ begins with _L_! _Milk_ begins with _M_!” He kicked his leg in the air. “ _Knee_ begins with _N_!”

“In fact, it begins with _K_ ,” Bungo pointed out, and Bilbo gave him a crestfallen look. “Not to worry, my boy. I’ll explain when we get home.”

Soon, Bilbo began to understand how letters worked together to form words. The three Bagginses would spend hours each day stretched out on the parlor carpet, turning the painted blocks this way and that to spell every word Bilbo could think of, pointing out the patterns, the rules, the exceptions to the rules.

He learned to replicate the letters himself, and could soon write his own name. His favorite letter was _B_ , although he very often drew the “wings” facing the wrong direction. Once he had mastered it, however, his parents had to hide the ink away to stop him from writing _BB_ on everything that belonged to him. As a compromise, Belladonna stitched the initials into all of his clothes — and even some of his toys and blankets — in brightly colored thread.

With the help of Bag End’s many books, Bungo and Belladonna eventually taught their son to read sentences. If only they could have agreed on which stories those sentences should form. Belladonna’s taste in books had much in common with her bedtime stories — epic journeys, brave heroes, and no shortage of magic. Her husband’s preferences, on the other hand, were much simpler.

“Not that boring vegetable book again,” Belladonna scoffed one afternoon when they were choosing what to read from the shelf in the study. “We need something with adventure.”

“This book is _not_ boring,” Bungo objected, flipping through the illustrated pages. “It’s educational, and it teaches the value of a hard day’s work.”

“Oh, well, I suppose that _would_ be an adventure to you,” Belladonna quipped.

Bungo stared at her with a slack jaw, so she rolled her eyes and agreed to read from _Farmer Goodenough’s Vegetables_ , on the condition that they follow it with _The Blue Dragon_ — a story which had been lovingly crafted by one of Belladonna’s many brothers, although whether out of memory or imagination was up for debate. Bilbo showed great interest in both stories, delighted as he was by now to read each and every word put in front of him.

“Po-ta-to,” he sounded out, on a page describing Farmer Goodenough digging the very vegetable from the dirt, alongside a gentle pen and ink drawing depicting the scene.

It wasn’t long before Bilbo began reading without his parents there to guide him. He would lie on his belly on the floor of his room, books spread out all around him, and read aloud with his finger on the page to guide him.

One afternoon as he was doing just that, his parents sat in the parlor with the window open wide — Belladonna resewing a fuzzy ear onto Bilbo’s favorite stuffed bear, and Bungo sorting through the post. Their son’s voice in the near distance, skimming over the words he knew and slowing down at the more challenging ones, was music to their ears.

After half an hour or so, however, that comforting little voice vanished entirely, and they were left only with the steady snip-snip of the gardener’s shears outside.

“I don’t hear him anymore,” Bungo said. “Do you think something’s wrong?”

“Probably fallen asleep,” Belladonna suggested, placing needle and thread back in her sewing kit and stretching her arms above her head. “He has the right idea.”

Bungo tapped his thumb three times on the arm of his chair before deciding to get up. “I think we should check on him.”

Belladonna joined him down the hall to Bilbo’s room, where the pair of them came upon a rather surprising sight. Instead of drooling sleepily on the pages of an open book, Bilbo was sitting cross-legged with the pages scattered all around him. Their edges were ragged, as if they had been torn from their spines. This was, as his parents quickly discovered, because they had.

Bungo rushed forward into the room. “Bilbo, what have you done?”

“I made my own story!” the boy announced proudly.

“You can’t tear up books, Bilbo.” Bungo knelt down and began gathering the torn pages from the floor. _Farmer Goodenough’s Vegetables_ and _The Blue Dragon_ , from the looks of it. “Oh, look what you’ve done. They’re ruined.”

“Wait, Bungo. Stop,” Belladonna said, joining them on the carpet. She took the sheets from her husband’s hands and held them out to Bilbo, who appeared dreadfully confused by all the hubbub. “Darling, here, show us what order they should go in.”

Mr. and Mrs. Baggins watched silently as their son shuffled through the thin stack of paper, nose wrinkling every so often in concentration, and laid each page down carefully on the floor. He placed them side by side in a single row, doing his very best to line up the edges. Then he sat back on his heels and appraised his work.

“Read it to us, sweet pea,” Belladonna urged him.

With a deep breath, Bilbo scooted over to the left-most page and placed his finger underneath the very first word. “One bright spring morning,” he read, “Farmer Goodenough rose to begin his work. He ate a big breakfast of eggs, sausages, and tomatoes. Then he put on his hat and walked out the door.”

He turned his attention to the next page over, took another deep breath, and continued. “There he saw a great blue dragon. It was bigger than anything he had ever seen.”

Belladonna and Bungo glanced at each other over Bilbo’s head. Belladonna’s expression was one of burgeoning joy, Bungo’s of bewilderment. They listened until the story was over.

_‘You must pay me before I will let you pass,’ the dragon said. He was sitting on a hill of treasure. There were goblets and spoons and pocket watches. All of it had been taken from travelers._

_‘One, two, three, four, five carrots,’ said Farmer Goodenough. ‘I have five carrots.’_

_‘Hmm,’ said the dragon, considering the hobbit’s offer. ‘What else do you have?’ he asked._

_‘One, two, three. I have three cabbages,’ said Farmer Goodenough. He was very proud of these._

_‘I already have too many of those,’ said the dragon in a mean voice. ‘I will give you one more chance to impress me. If you don’t, I will eat you.’_

_Farmer Goodenough wiped the sweat from his brow. He wanted to go home, but he knew he had more work to do._

_‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,’ he said. ‘I have thirteen potatoes.’_

_The dragon smiled. ‘Yes, very good. I will take those. Give them to me now.’_

_When he was done, Farmer Goodenough made his way back home. ‘Ah, what a day,’ he said, putting his feet up by the fire._

When the story was finished, there was silence in the room for a moment. Bilbo straightened the row of pages and looked from his mother to his father with questions in his eyes.

Then, with a movement so quick it sent her hair flying like a banner behind her, Belladonna hurried out of the room and into the parlor for her sewing kit. She returned seconds later with a seam ripper.

“What on earth are you doing?” Bungo cried as she grabbed another book from the pile on the carpet, opened it, and proceeded to tear the stitches from the spine.

“Letting our son make his own stories,” she said, moving on to the next book.

From then on, the shelves of Bag End were filled with story after story pulled apart and put back together again with colorful thread. Two, three, even as many as four books came together to weave an entirely new tale — always with an ordinary hero, dangerous obstacles, and a comfortable conclusion. Books which taught the sounds of livestock met with books about royalty in disguise. Outings to pick berries became quests to outsmart terrifying beasts.

All the while, Belladonna, needle in hand, cheered her son on with a smile. With time, even Bungo learned to curb his Baggins sensibilities — the ones that told him only the most unrespectable of ruffians tore up perfectly good books — and smile along with her, especially at the aforementioned comfortable conclusions.

When he was older, Bilbo would write the stories himself, filling them with the wings of _B_ s, and _Q_ s by the sides of their respective _U_ s, and all the others. He would lock himself in his room and put a pen to the page instead of just a finger, as characters and adventures of his very own spilled from his imagination. But for now, with so many heroes and heroines within arm’s reach, stitching them together seemed just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> When I realized I had written two one-shots about young Bilbo, one set in winter and one set in summer, I figured I should probably make it a four-season series. So this is the spring installment. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
